The present invention relates to an image-receiving sheet for electrophotography. In particular, the present invention relates to a high-quality image-receiving sheet for electrophotography, which is particularly used for machines for an electrophotographic process such as copying machines, printers and facsimiles, for example, color copying machines, to provide photo-images having high quality and gloss.
The offset printing technique is mainly employed in general commercial printing and high-quality printing methods. For the offset printing, coated papers such as art papers are used, because these papers have a very smooth surface and accordingly have merits such as an excellent ink transition, a high image reproducibility, a high image gloss and a good color reproducibility.
However, the coating layer of the coated paper containing a large amount of a pigment has a high hygroscopicity. Therefore, when the coated paper per se is used as the image-receiving sheet for electrophotography, water vapor in the coated paper expands when the image is fixed by heating and, as a result, blisters (expansions in the coated layer) are formed to cause rough or coarse image and to make the formation of a fine image like a photograph impossible. Another problem of the ordinary coated papers is that when an image information such as a face or scenery is to be output as a photograph, the gloss is not enough. Under these circumstances, the coated papers have rarely been used as the image-receiving sheets for electrophotography.